


Cursed by Blood

by goddess_of_flowers_and_death



Series: Little Hunter AU [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Eating People Alive, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 01:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddess_of_flowers_and_death/pseuds/goddess_of_flowers_and_death
Summary: There's a reason Adam lives with his father and brothers now.In Sam's words: "He's a Winchester. He's already cursed."





	1. Turns Out Revenge Tastes Fine Warm

**Author's Note:**

> Adam is five years old.

"That's her." Two small figures crouched in the bushes by the hospital parking lot, eyeing a nurse as she dropped her purse into the passenger seat and ducked into her car.

"You sure?" the taller figure questioned, glancing at her brother as the nurse turned on her car and backed out of the parking space. The moon was full, and the light from it glinted off the hood and into the creatures' eyes as the car slowly drove towards the road. "We don't want to get this wrong."

"I'm sure," the other affirmed, leaning out of his cover to watch the taillights bounce over a speedbump and pull into the street. "It's been a few years, but I remember that bitch staring at _him_ all googly-eyed. This is John Winchester's pretty slut."

"Alright." The tall one backed further into the bushes and stood, out of the line of sight of the hospital parking lot's cameras. "The cop first, and then her. That'll make John Winchester come running."

The two slipped back into the underbrush and plodded into the greenbelt, heading closer to the town. The cemetery had become a sort of base of operations for the young ghouls. Free food and a place to hide the bodies. One small tunnel behind the brickwork of a crypt to another crypt, a locked one, and they were hidden completely.

They put the cop there, once they were done. It took them almost half a day. Little bites, savoring the moment. They made it clear who they were after, who they were doing this for. Little Joe Barton wouldn't say a word about John, but he sure made a lot of noise. It attracted some attention, but it only took him nine hours to bleed out from their little staggered bites. And he was pretty quiet near the end. No one found them.

It took them a few hours of circling the nurse's house the next night to decide how to strike. The tall girl, taking on the form of Joe Barton himself, finally circled around the front and knocked on the door. The shorter boy, a middle-aged gentleman who died in 1976, ducked in next to the door and waited tensely for his sister's cues.

"Excuse me, Kate Milligan?" The girl asked, puffing her chest out confidently, although her toes scuffed across the porch floor.

"Yes? Joe?" Kate Milligan opened the door all the way, leaning against the doorframe. Her blonde hair was disheveled, but she had changed out of her scrubs. "What are you doing here so late at night? Is everything alright?"

"Yes, yes, everything's fine," the girl reassured, waving Joe Barton's hands. "May I come in?"

Stepping over the threshold, Joe Barton's hand threw a fast gesture behind her back towards her brother. _Stay put. I can handle this._

The boy growled and folded his arms, but settled into his spot, guarding the small backpack they had brought along. Fine. If she wanted to get John Winchester's nurse whore all tied up, she could be his guest. As long as she saved some for him while the bitch still had breath to scream.

The tall girl indulged in a few minutes of small talk while Kate Milligan made some tea, noncaffeinated so it wouldn't keep them awake. The human woman seemed worried, but the girl took the extra time to ease her mind. Joe Barton was in the area and wanted to check in, make sure she was alright.

And she was. Apparently, she had just put her _son_ to bed.

The ghoul stifled a sharp inhale at that, taking a sip of the chamomile water. It was disgusting, but tolerable and necessary for keeping up appearances. "How old is your boy now?"

"Five and a half," Kate Milligan replied, sighing into her tea and leaning back in her chair. "The years just fly by, huh? I thought life would never be the same after John left, but I never suspected life would be _this_ different. Or, this brand of different, I guess. Work has been the same as ever, which just makes everything more surreal . . ."

The ghoul almost laughed aloud. Well, what do you know? John had left a little bastard son behind. She hadn't dug around in this son of a bitch's memories enough. There must be plenty he knew about the kid. His tiny little corpse would send the perfect message . . .

The conversation paused for a second, and the ghoul was distracted shuffling through memories. Then, "How's your wife?" The girl hid a grimace behind her mug of herb-water. She didn't want to have to dig through Joe Barton's silly happy memories of his silly happy wife. She'd just dug around a bit, as quick as she could, and determined that he knew next to nothing about . . . Adam. Adam Milligan. Adam _Winchester_.

"Oh, she's doing fine. Just great. Time sure does fly, though. You're right."

"Did he ever tell you what he was doing in town?" Kate Milligan set the mug down and stared intently into Joe Barton's eyes with her own big cow eyes. "He said he was working with you, but he never said why, or what you two were after. He just left town, and you said the case was closed. What happened?"

It was more effort than Kate Milligan would ever know for the ghoul not to grip the mug so tight it shattered. _He killed our dad, that's what happened. He killed our dad, and he ditched town after a quick lay_. "I'm afraid I can't share the details of the case."

Kate Milligan frowned at her mug but nodded. This conversation was getting old quickly.

"Well, I should head out." The ghoul stood, walking around the table to her side. She kept the mug in one hand and extended the other. "It was great to see you again, Kate."

Kate Milligan looked a bit bemused but grasped Joe Barton's hand. She never even saw the other hand come flying up until the porcelain mug had already shattered over her temple. She dropped, shoulder hitting the table on the way down and landing her in a pathetic heap on the wood floorboards, one shoulder on the pretty rug laid out under the table.

Joe Barton's smile felt unnaturally wide over his teeth, but it stretched gleefully nonetheless at the ghoul's elation. The bitch and her bastard son.

She swung the front door open and peeked her head out, whispering sharply for her brother's attention.

"What took so long?" he demanded grouchily, standing from the cold dirt and stepping quickly inside, shutting the front door behind him and dropping the backpack next to him. "You get the nurse tied up?"

"Knocked her out." The boy took a step forward to the warm body on the floorboards, but his sister caught his arm. "Wait, it gets better." He looked up at her with a tilt of his balding head. "That little slut had a son."

The shorter one's eyes widened. " _John's_ son?"

His sister nodded, flashing the slow creep of Joe Barton's grin. "John's son. She said she just put him to bed. He should be upstairs right now."

"Well, hell!" Her brother started for the stairs. "You didn't check? He could have climbed out the window or something by now!"

"He's five years old!" his sister called after him, digging a thick bundle of rope from the backpack and walking over to Kate Milligan's limp body that was slowly twitching awake. "He's not going anywhere."

The ghoul hurried up the steps nevertheless, slowing his footsteps as he walked down the hall, checking each door. Halfway down the hallway was a simple door that led to a small room decorated in shitty train wallpaper and stick figure drawings on printer paper. A short bed stood in the center of the room under a window with the shades down, and there was a small lump under the covers. Jackpot.

The boy's eyes shot open the moment the ghoul clamped a hand over his mouth, teary baby blues darting frantically across his face and tiny arms kicking.

"Hey, buddy." The kid tried to scream, flailing as the ghoul lifted him out from under the covers and wrapped his thick arms around him. Ugh, the stupid bastard was getting spit all over the balding man's hand. "We're gonna go see Mommy. Sound fun?" The boy's little matchstick arms and bare feet were helpless, but he kept kicking and squirming, which was annoying at worst.

When they got downstairs, Kate Milligan had woken up, eyes nearly popping out of her head when she saw the little brother with his arms clamped over her boy's mouth. She started fighting the ropes holding her down on the table, screaming and crying against the cloth looped between her teeth.

"Ooh, he hardly looks like John," the sister cooed, running Joe Barton's fingers through Adam's short, sleep-tousled blonde hair. "Light hair, light eyes. Such . . ." She caught a fresh tear halfway down his face and licked it off her finger. Adam screamed and kicked and cried. ". . . innocent eyes." She turned back to the bound woman on the table and leaned over her. "Can he really be the son of a cold-blooded killer?"

The gag was loosed from Kate Milligan's mouth, and she moved her trembling lips in a shaky plea. "Please. Pleas-Please let him go. He's got nothing to do with whate-whatever this is." She buried back a sob and bit her lip, eyes boldly meeting those of the ghoul leaning over her face. "He's just a child."

"He's just _his_ child," the sister snarled, pushing back from the table and stalking over to the ratty backpack by the door. The brother grinned, tightening his grip on the little monster in his arms. Here's where the fun part started. Would she last longer than Joe Barton? How long would she scream? "Just the child of the man who _murdered_ our father. That son of a bitch."

The girl pulled out and unwrapped her and her brother's knife collection, sending the nurse into hysterics, annoying hiccup-y sobs echoing around the dining room. "I didn't know," she pleaded pathetically. "I didn't know. I'm sorry. I'm s-sorry; I didn't know."

"Oh, we know." Joe Barton's voice didn't lend itself to lightness of tone, but the creature managed. "We're not after you, just that bastard John Winchester. See, you?" She stalked back over to the table, her calloused hand wrapped around the smooth handle of her favorite knife. "You're the fun part. And once you're dead and scattered across the first floor, and Adam here is a little bitty stain on the carpet, John Winchester will come running, and we'll get everything we want. We'll get to see him find out that everything he touched in this town is dead, his cop buddy, his slut nurse, and his little bastard offspring. And then? We'll get to kill him ourselves. Nice and slow." She rested the knife against the sobbing nurse's arm and leaned in right next to her ear. "Just like we're gonna do with you." Her speech was concluded with a playful bite at the cartilage of the woman's ear.

The first little slice into soft forearm drew a strangled cry from between the woman's teeth, and the girl was forced to stuff the twisted cloth gag back into her mouth for fear of alerting the neighbors prematurely. At the sound of his mother's pain, the child in the thick arms of the drooling ghoul in the corner let out another muffled wail and kicked at the thick arms pinning his little matchsticks down.

"Don't worry, honey." The girl lifted Joe Barton's blood smeared lips from his mother's arm and smiled brightly. "You're next."

"Oh, come on!" her brother whined, squeezing the kid's tear-streaked little cheeks hard enough to bruise. "The little shit just pissed all over me."

A bowl was placed under the table to catch the little drips of blood from Kate Milligan's arm—waste not, want not—and the wet kid changed hands so the shorter ghoul could go rinse himself off. Careful not to let the patch of foul-smelling wet pajama pants touch her clothes, his sister gripped the human child with one hand under the kid's arms and the other over his mouth, catching warm tears halfway down his face and letting them run down over Joe Barton's fingers. When he got back from the bathroom, now that he was more or less clean and free of the wriggling mass, her brother demanded a turn with the John Winchester's nurse slut.

They took the boy into the bathroom to the sound of his mother's screamed protests, the little grate of her tugging the ropes desperately against the wooden table legs they were tied to. The boy was just starting to get tired, struggles finally getting weaker and less frequent, but he put up a fight when they took him away from his mommy. He was still soaked in piss, so the two of them tied his little fists behind his back and his tiny little kicking feet to each other and dumped him in the bathtub. He stayed down, sobbing weakly into the pajama shirt they had bundled up around his mouth and tied off. He was shivering too, the cold porcelain tub likely stealing whatever body heat he had. The ghouls pulled the curtain and shut the door, wedging a dining room chair under the door handle. Now they could focus on poor tasty little Kate Milligan.

She lasted almost half a day, cries slowly getting weaker and weaker as the sun crept up in the sky. The young ghouls took their time, taking on her face after only a few bites, which threw her into a panic so intense she actually passed out. With a long eyeroll, the brother poured himself a big glass of icy tap water and dumped it over her tear-streaked face.

She wet herself too after a few hours, after she had run out of tears and her voice was nothing but a hoarse, painful-sounding moan. Only two or three cuts littered her arms, but the two made sure that they never closed, mouths wearing at the skin and ripping little pieces of skin and muscle off to keep the wounds open. It was about eleven hours, almost twelve, when her heart finally gave out and her blood slowly began to cool.

They really tore into her then, ripping muscle from bone, tearing at organs and skin and scattering her around the house. It took them about an hour and a half to strip her bones completely and scatter her sufficiently. They could be neat eaters if they so pleased, but this wasn't about hunger. This was to send a message.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the context I mentioned for "Nightmares". I'll post the second chapter sometime tomorrow. It's already written; I just have the opportunity to make people wait >: )
> 
> One of the interesting things about thinking out this scenario is that the ghouls mentioned growing up alone after their father was killed, so presumably, they'd be children too around now. Children orphaned fairly recently, in the long-run. . . . I swear I wrote this AU to be happy. 
> 
> -Persephone
> 
> Still haven't bought Supernatural.


	2. What is a Winchester Who Doesn't Suffer?

The taller ghoul had to admit, while licking Kate Milligan's cold gore off of her own lips, that she was starting to get used to fresher, warmer blood. Why go after corpses when warm bodies were so . . . fresh? And available too. Humans were idiots.

It took them a moment to remember the snack still tied up in the bathroom. It had been a long, _satisfying_ night, and the brother was thrilled to remind his sister that it wasn't over yet. John Winchester's tasty little son was still waiting in the bathtub for them.

The chair was tossed to the side, clattering across the bloody wood and bumping into the table leg. When they pulled the curtain back, the kid was curled up, still shivering, but fast asleep. The taller ghoul leaned down at took a deep sniff of his shivering chest. He smelled disgusting, but still like warm blood and a tiny pumping heart beating unsteadily under his skin. _Delicious_.

It was her brother's idea to turn the shower on, to wake him and to clean him off at the same time. The boy jumped under the cold spray, wiggling away from the icy droplet before noticing the two leaning over the tub. Both of them with his mother's face.

He screamed, really properly screamed even from behind the loose gag, burying his face in his hands and weeping. The taller ghoul cooed and ran a hand over his wet hair, still smelling his piss faintly on his body. He flinched under the gentle fingers, but then leaned a little into the warm hand, still shivering violently. The siblings dragged him back under the water to rinse him a little more thoroughly, washing the last traces of dried urine from his pants. He struggled, of course, but he was weak and tired and dehydrated and hungry, most likely. It was easy to hold him more or less still in the freezing water.

The brother ghoul bundled the wet little boy against his chest, stilling weak struggles with warm arms wrapped around his shivering little matchsticks. "Aw, you scared, buddy? You cold?" His sister smirked with Kate Milligan's face as he leaned in towards the boy's ear, twisting his mother's voice. "Do you believe in monsters, Adam?"

The boy went stiff. The arms around him were too tight for him to keep struggling with bound hands and feet, but he stiffened and stilled completely.

"You do, don't you?" The ghoul continued, rubbing warm hands over the boy's shaking shoulders, warming the blood. "You still check under the bed every night. You still sleep with the light on, huh? You still get scared hearing about the Bogeyman. You still wet the bed when you have nightmares. But can I tell you a secret?" He paused to take a deep sniff of the child's warm, pure blood pumping hard under thick veins in his tiny neck. "Your worst nightmares can't even compare to us."

Against all odds, the boy still had the strength to sob.

When they carried the boy back into the dining room, he still had his eyes squeezed shut and his face buried in the chest of the monster wearing his dead mother's features. The brother tried to set him gently on the table, right in a smudgy pool of his mom's blood, but remarkably, the kid clung to his mother's killer, trying to bury his face back into the ghoul's shirt. The ghoul rolled his eyes, shooting his sister an incredulous look that she gave a bright laugh in return to. But she still helped him detach the kid's little fingers from his gore-stained shirt and place the kid firmly on the wet table.

He was still dripping wet, water droplets falling steadily into the pool of thick cold blood below him. The overwhelming smell of death in the room didn't seem to bother him too much, but then, he had spent half a day tied up in a bathroom that smelled like his own urine. It's not like he knew what death smelled like anyways, the sister concluded, smudging his mom's blood across his tiny face while trying to catch a stray tear.

Finally, they untied the gag. Adam was silent, watching both of them with such a complete lack of understanding that the brother nearly laughed aloud. He did lose it when the tiny trembling lips squeaked out, "Mommy?"

The brother and sister both laughed together, unable to contain the bubbling amusement.

"I'm not your mommy, honey," the sister stated almost sweetly, leaning down to get on eye level with the bound child. "We ate your mommy, understand? We scattered her around the room. She's dead, get it?" The boy trembled harder, but didn't lose the tiny spark of hope buried deep in his eyes. "We killed her just like your daddy killed our daddy."

A hiccup-y sob tore from his throat. "Mommy?"

"Oh my God, don't you get it?" she snapped in reply, knocking the child down with a single sharp backhand. "We _ate_ your mommy. And now we're gonna eat you. And mommy can't save you."

"Mo~ommy." The cry came out as a hoarse, dry sob, but the understanding seemed to be sinking in. Hopefully. The girl did not feel like explaining every few minutes of her meal that this idiot's mom was long dead.

Her brother was calmer, pulling his sister back and taking her place over the human child, John Winchester's bastard offspring. He leaned in for another deep sniff at the boy's prominent ribs, tracing his tongue over the wet skin and the sinking his teeth slowly into the thin layer of meat. The child shrieked. Suddenly, all his energy seemed to be renewed, feet kicking out wildly and arms beating as one at the ghoul that was latched onto him. His lungs seemed endless, one long breath coming out in a pained scream that rattled the house.

"Quite the screamer, isn't he?" the girl commented with a laugh in her eyes as her brother flicked his tongue smoothly over the bitemarks and then over Kate Milligan's lips.

"Oh, he's delicious," her brother moaned, digging a finger across the fresh cut and running the blood over his tongue, drawing another scream from the kid's endless lungs.

"Really?" His sister pushed him aside and took a sniff of the tear in the flesh. She dug her own teeth in over her brother's premade bite and tore a little strip of flesh off his bony ribs. The child's scream was paralyzing, his voice cracking and breaking from the force of it as she chewed slowly on the fresh skin. "Oh my God, he _is_." She caught a drip of blood from its little race down his back from the side and inhaled it. "He's so . . . tender. So fresh!" She looked up to meet her brother's gaze, hidden behind Kate Milligan's hazel cow eyes. "We've _got_ to eat like this more often."

There was no warning. No scent in the air or footsteps around the house. Just the door suddenly kicked down and there was a Hunter in their midst. Sunlight poured through the open door as the Hunter raised a shotgun and blasted her brother's head off, just like that.

With a vicious scream, she threw herself at the dark figure in the doorway, nails tearing into the thin skin over his temple, but he threw her swiftly off and into a wall, hard enough to dent the plaster. She hissed and wiped a little drop of Adam's blood from her lip. "Tell John Winchester we left him a present: the leftovers of his nurse slut and the body of his bastard boy." She jumped sideways, dodging a swing from the butt of the shotgun and rolling towards the table where Adam Winchester lay taking shallow, shuddering breaths. One hand shot forward, still streaked with Winchester blood, and made a grab for the young boy's tiny throat, but the Hunter was too fast, catching her wrist and throwing himself at her, knocking her sideways into a puddle of slick, sticky gore.

In two seconds, she was pinned. In five swift blows, the Hunter had completely bashed her brains across the carpet, the ghoul's gore mixing into her victim's.

~

Aw shit, the kid was bleeding. Rufus dropped his shotgun and leaped towards the table, hands unsteady and unsure. Okay, okay, stop the bleeding of course. Step one.

The kid flinched violently when Rufus brushed a finger by the ragged tear in his flesh. Damn, who knew how long with poor son of a bitch was in the ghouls' hands. No disrespect to his mother.

Rufus gave himself a quick tour of the house and grabbed a hand-towel from the kitchen. Not exactly sterile, but he could clean the wound later. As fast as possible, the Hunter was pressing the towel over the bloody hole ripped in this kid's side. It wasn't exactly life-threatening, but still . . . This kid needed medical attention, and probably a whole hell of a lot of fluids too. His skin was wet and cold. Rufus shot a quick thanks up to God that the kid didn't seem to have a fever, but for now, his body temperature was far too low.

Ignoring the dry sobs and sharp flinches from his touch, Rufus picked the kid up from the table and finally noticed the pool of blood he was laying in, certainly not his. Likely his mother's. Shit.

Bobby. Bobby would know what to do. He was always more into that . . . kid _thing_. Volunteering to take on John's boys when he ran off on Hunts for too long to leave them on their own. Speaking of John's boys, what the hell had that ghoul been talking about? John's bastard boy? They couldn't mean . . . ? No, the kid was his priority right now. He could sort the rest out later.

It took him a couple minutes to track down the boy's room, distracted as he was with the shivering boy he had in his arms, trying to keep pressure on the tear over his ribs and trying to ignore the blood dripping from the kid's clammy skin and wet pants onto Rufus' clothing. He wasn't even sure if the boy was paying attention to anything that was happening, only reacting to the occasional touch with a whimper or a flinch, lungs trembling in dry, silent sobs that only kept the blood running from the wound on his side.

Digging through drawers and throwing aside irrelevant findings, eventually Rufus cobbled together a clean set of clothes and gently eased the child into them, wiping clean patches of blood as he went. Oh, he was so out of his depth here . . .

The sound of sirens prompted Rufus to pack up his stuff faster, whether they were headed to their location or not. Someone may have heard screams or seen him kick in the door. Better safe than sorry. The poor kid still hadn't opened his eyes, and Rufus didn't have the time or the temperament to coax him out of whatever protective shell he'd built to survive this. And honestly, he didn't really want to. The kid was safe now, and he could stay within himself for as long as he needed. Bobby could sort it all out later.

After dumping his equipment in the trunk and spitting on the bodies he didn't have time to take with him, Rufus finally bundled the shivering kid in the backseat, buckling him in under fresh dry clothes, a towel tied haphazardly over his wound, and two thick blankets he stole from the cleaner parts of the house.

It would take some time, but the kid would be fine. He'd never forget this, any of this, but he had survived, and the rest could come later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where did you think this was going?
> 
> -Persephone
> 
> Still don't own Supernatural, thank goodness. Clearly I shouldn't be trusted with it.


End file.
